The track blowing up in Brooklyn clubs and upstate New York radio right now was not made by a major label, and that is exactly what makes it interesting.
“Red Light, Pepper Light” by dancehall veteran Future Fambo, produced by Brooke Vernon of First One Music, has quietly crossed the 1.16 million stream mark across YouTube alone, and Vernon is not shy about what that means to him.
“This is my biggest hit,” Vernon said plainly, pointing to the song’s growing footprint across New York. He specifically called out radio play upstate and club rotation in both Rochester and Brooklyn as signs that the record is doing something real, not just racking up passive streams.
The numbers back him up. The official audio has pulled 474,000 views on YouTube, the music video has cleared 605,000 on the First One Music channel, and the track sits at over 46,000 streams on Spotify with additional traction on TikTok and Instagram. For an independent label celebrating nine years in business, those figures carry weight.
Vernon launched First One Music out of Brooklyn with a specific purpose in mind. “I loved the music so much and I saw where some of the youths were not getting enough attention,” he explained. “So I decided to start my label to help some of these artistes and push them in the right direction.”
That mission has kept the label working with a mix of emerging and established artists over the years, including Singer D, Calico Flames, Dre Blacks, Chris Crown, and Nkosi.
But the Future Fambo record feels like a different tier, the kind of crossover moment that changes what people expect from a label.
Future Fambo, also known as Fambizzle, has been a known name in dancehall circles for years, so the pairing with Vernon was not random.
Brooke is a great producer and it is great to see that the track, Red Light, Pepper Light is having so much success,” the artist said. Coming from someone with his experience in the genre, that is not a throwaway compliment.
What makes Vernon’s story genuinely unusual is the range of his life outside the studio. He is a visual artist with a background in sculpture, and he also works as a chef, which means music production is one part of a creative life that does not fit neatly into any single box.
In the studio, his taste runs across reggae, dancehall, hip-hop, and R&B, with a focus on records that can reach people who do not already follow a specific scene.
The fact that “Red Light, Pepper Light” is now getting radio spins and club play, not just YouTube clicks, matters to producers like Vernon more than most streaming metrics.
Real-world rotation is harder to manufacture and harder to ignore, and it suggests the song has legs beyond a single viral moment.
First One Music is now nine years in, and Vernon is still operating with the same core instinct that started it all, finding artists who are being overlooked and giving them a proper push. The question now is what comes next for a label that just landed its biggest record.
